Distribution of CCRCs demanded for all tenant farmers

Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh Tenant Farmers Association (APTFA) state committee on Sunday demanded the State government to issue Crop Cultivators Rights Cards (CCRC) to all 30 lakh tenant farmers in the State.

The state government has issued CCRCs to only 7 lakh tenant farmers.

Speaking to media at the Balotsav Bhavan here on Sunday, the APTFA president Y Radhakrishna, general secretary M Haribabu and assistant secretary P Rangarao said the government set the target of distributing the CCRCs to only 10 lakh tenant farmers and demanded the government to distribute the cards to 33 lakh tenant farmers.

They said the banks are sanctioning crop loans to only 5 per cent tenant farmers though more than 70 per cent land is cultivated by tenant farmers. They said friends and relatives of the land owners have got a large number of CCRCs in the state and demanded the government to issue the cards to genuine tenant farmers and take steps to check issuing cards to fake tenant farmers.

They asked the government to select the tenant farmers by conducting grama sabhas. The leaders said around Rs 1 lakh crore worth of bank loans are sanctioned in the state every year to the farmers but the share of tenant farmers is only five percent. They demanded the government to sanction 70 per cent loans to the tenant farmers because they constitute 70 percent of the land cultivated in the state.

They also demanded the government to set targets to the bank branches to sanction crop loans to the tenant farmers and monitor regularly.

The APTFA leaders said the crop output decreased due to various reasons in the state and demanded the government to take steps to increase the crop production and take up repairs to reservoirs and initiate measures for storage of water.